Being the Beloved:
stories of ongoing transformation in daily life
By Maggie Cheung
By the time February rolls around I am usually hanging onto life by my fingernails. This self-diagnosed Seasonal Affective Disorder girlie struggles to survive the Big Dark in the Pacific Northwest each year and this winter is no different. Perhaps it is worse: my dad passed away in November and *gestures wildly at the world* all this is happening too. There aren’t enough candles in all of Home Goods to hygge my way through the dark, the grief, and the nightly news.
What’s a baby contemplative to do? What else can I add to my life beyond my arsenal of mental health and spiritual life professionals, pharmaceuticals, and copious mind-numbing doses of reality television?
These days I’m thinking a lot about my favorite mystic, Etty Hillesum. Etty lived during the years before and during World War II and, despite opportunities to hide, ultimately stayed committed to presence within her suffering community and died in the Holocaust. It’s popular right now to say we are living in unprecedented times, but 80 years ago, Etty’s world was undeniably going to hell in a hand basket. She wrote, “Ultimately, we have just one mortal duty: to reclaim large areas of peace in ourselves, more and more peace, and to reflect it toward others. And the more peace there is in us, the more peace there will also be in our troubled world.” I invite you all to read Letters from Westerbork, Etty’s dispatches from a Nazi transit camp. She found a shocking amount of peace for someone who knew she and everyone she loved would soon be destroyed.
If 1940's Europe Etty Hillesum could find that peace within herself, why can’t I? I’m only an amateur mystic, no one’s going to be writing books about me and my favorite TV shows when I’m dead, but this work sounds right to me. It sounds right that the only way we move through Times Such As These, whatever those times may be, is to do our utter best to locate that peace within ourselves.
James Finley, the author, psychologist, and former Trappist monk, talks about a self that is deeper than “the self things happen to”. Etty didn’t use this language, but I believe she understood this concept better than most. I’m not going to reclaim the peace she’s talking about with surface level measures. The times I’m living in, both in my small inner world and the bigger world around me, require going as deep as I can go. As we hurtle further into 2026, this is where I’m putting my attention and energy. The more peace I can find in myself, the more peace I have to reflect toward others. I cannot avoid the literal or metaphorical darkness, but I can choose how to move through it and hopefully become a light for others. May we all find our inner mystic this year.
Maggie Cheung is a spiritual director living in Seattle with her husband, teenagers, and ornery dog. When she is not avoiding the horrors by bingeing The Real Housewives, she writes about the spiritual path on her Substack, The Amateur Mystic.
What books, media, activities are nurturing your heart, soul, mind, strength in this season as we are loving God and our neighbor as ourselves? Post in the comments below or hop on over to our Facebook page and share with one another.